


give me the burden, give me the blame

by mistakeshavebeenmade



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: AU: bruce is part of the airport battle instead of ant man, Fix-It, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-10
Updated: 2016-05-14
Packaged: 2018-06-07 12:21:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6803926
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mistakeshavebeenmade/pseuds/mistakeshavebeenmade
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They need back-up. He and Sam and Bucky can't take on the entire world alone, and Steve knows it. So he makes the phone call he'd hoped never to make, and a few hours later Bruce Banner is sitting in the back of a white panel van.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

“It’s good to see you,” Steve says, clambering into the gloom that fills the back of the van, and catches the brief flash of teeth, slightly yellowed from too many nights spent in a lab replacing sleep with black coffee, as he pulls the door shut behind him with one hand, holding out a comm unit with the other.

“Considering the last time we saw each other, I’m not sure I believe you. But thank you for saying it.”

Steve searches for a way to try to convince his friend that he means it, that it means something to him that he would come out of hiding for this, while the shadow in the back of the van fumbles the communicator into his ear. But then, Bruce Banner has more reason to distrust people who would wield superheroes like weapons than Steve does, than _any_ of them except Bucky do.

(He thinks that Bucky would be the first one in line to tell him that he was never a superhero, only a weapon, but James Buchanan Barnes had always loomed large in Steve’s eyes, long before the metal arm and the trying to atone for what he’d been made to do. He’d always been the real hero, out of the two of them.)

He can see the same nervous energy in Bruce’s too-rigid posture, in the way that he picks a piece of pocket lint to careful shreds as the van door slides open again, that he remembers hearing in Bucky’s teasing voice the day he didn’t die on the train. He very carefully doesn’t touch Bruce when he tells him that he hopes they won’t need him, that he should wait in the van, just in case. When he closes the door on Bruce, who has dropped to a full lotus on the van floor, he still doesn’t know how to tell him he’s valued.

He doesn’t manage to find the right words before Iron Man, in all his metallic splendor, touches down in front of them.

* * *

 

“I need a distraction.”

They’re the last words he wanted to say, but Bruce’s soft voice is in his ear immediately, like he was expecting this to happen.

“We’re on our way.”

The fight had gone south almost immediately. They were separated, Steve trying to go toe-to-toe with Tony and Rhodey and still keep T’Challa from killing Bucky, Natasha and Clint sparring like they weren’t closer than lovers, and then he was losing track of his friends right and left, his world narrowing to the fight in front of him.

He has no choice now, he tells himself, guilt coiling in his belly and settling there like ten pounds of lead. They need something big. Something that will keep Tony from noticing that Steve and Bucky are making a break for it. Something that Tony will see as the ultimate betrayal. Something perfectly calculated to make Tony Stark make the wrong tactical choice, because it’s a challenge that he absolutely cannot ignore.

(Somewhere, in the back of his mind, he hopes Bruce isn’t fueling this transformation with anger at being used as the ideal weapon against the person who’s probably his best friend. He would hate himself, in Bruce’s shoes. Hell, he hates himself a little as it is. But it’s the right tactical decision, and he knows it. He wishes that knowledge made it _feel_ right.)

He feels the ground shake. Then, for a moment, there is silence.

Then the crash of metal hitting metal as the Hulk, launching himself from the roof of the parking garage, slams into Rhodey from the side and sends him careening into Tony.

He watches the fight from cover for a moment, and the ten pound weight in his stomach doubles to twenty when he sees how _careful_ the Hulk is being. There’s not so much as a dent in Rhodey’s armor, or Tony’s. He throws things, and grasps, and holds, and yanks bodies this way and that, but always calculated, almost gentle for all that this is a fight. Steve can see Bruce in the Hulk’s vivid green eyes, can see both sides of the man he calls his friend working together in a moment of harmony that takes his breath away.

And of course, it can’t last, because Bruce was never there to win the fight for them. He was there to cover their retreat from a fight they’d lost before it ever began. Steve had watched the Star Wars movies during one rainy November weekend when evil had apparently decided it didn’t want to get its boots wet, and he recognizes the move they use to take the Hulk down. He’s sure Bruce recognizes it too, is laughing somewhere inside as he lets it happen because he can see the Quinjet taking off and he knows his job is done.

He hears the faint echo of other voices over the comms as they fly, Sam’s concern about Rhodey mingling with a tinny, far-off teenage voice telling Bruce that he’s “a big fan, Doctor Banner, really. I saw your fight with that guy? Abomination? And it’s just so cool, you doing the right thing and all even though people kinda hated you? Not me! Other people! I think you’re awesome.” Steve wishes he could see the look on Bruce’s face

He pulls the communicator out of his ear until they’re out of range, and all he can hear is static and Bucky's soft breathing next to him.

* * *

 

When he walks into the circle of light that’s beaming out of his friends’ prison cells, it’s Bruce’s face he sees first.

He still hasn’t figured out what to say to him, how to tell him just how valued he is. But when Bruce smiles, and nods his agreement to Sam’s whoop of “Man, I _knew_ you were coming to get us,” he thinks maybe he doesn’t have to say anything.


	2. Chapter 2

He doesn’t call Tony.

Bruce hears about the Accords over a staticky pocket radio in a clinic in Phnom Penh, and his blood runs cold. But he doesn’t call anyone, even though he can feel the weight of the nondescript but Stark-customized flip phone in his back pocket.

The next day, he pays a man with a battered truck two months worth of Vicodin for his bad back to let him ride along to Bangkok.

 

* * *

He’s staying in the seediest hotel he could find in Bukhara, and he spends 20.000 so’m in an internet cafe around the corner. It doesn’t take long for him to pull up an article about the Sokovia Accords. Tony will be there to sign them, he notes with something that feels as much like regret as anger. And Natasha.

He scrolls through five different articles, but never sees Steve’s name, or Clint’s, or any other names he knows.

He wonders, idly, if anyone has thought about the legal ramifications of placing Thor, the prince and actual alien, under the direct control of an Earth governing body. Considering the question keeps the anger that’s threatening to boil over in check.

(Did none of them know what happened when you let the government take control of someone with abilities like theirs? He had seen Thaddeus Ross on a crappy, static-filled TV screen in a hostel in Qarshi, then had seen nothing but green for several minutes after while he worked to reign in his anger.)

* * *

 

When the little fishing boat that carries him across the Caspian Sea in exchange for gout medication for her captain drops him off in Baku, the tinny stereo in the wheelhouse is blasting talk radio in Azeri, and Bruce doesn’t speak the language, but he speaks enough Turkish to muddle his way through. They’re saying something about signing, and he catches the word ‘Sokovia’ easily.

The signing will be in a week, in Vienna, he finally manages to understand.

He resolutely ignores the fact that his footsteps are carrying him ever closer to Europe. It’s not for any particular reason. He tells himself that firmly. He’s just been in one place for too long. It’s time to go somewhere else. Maybe he’ll head for Spain, cross over into Morocco and head south.

He thinks about calling Tony, or Natasha, or Steve, or Clint.

He hops a cargo train outside of Baku instead, and heads west.

 

* * *

In Peć, he spends the night with an elderly woman after failing to convince her that he really didn’t know how to give proper medical care to cats. He blames his too-rusty Serbian. He manages to find something in his bags to treat the cats’ ringworm. He sleeps on the tiny couch in the equally tiny apartment with three of the still-healthy Persians.

In the morning, he shares his too-sweet tea with one of the cats, and reads about the explosion at the signing of the Sokovia Accords with a straight face.

He can’t decipher what he’s feeling, but something deep in the pit of his stomach unknots itself when he sees pictures of Tony Stark standing in front of a fire truck. He doesn’t expect to see pictures of Natasha. She’s too good at what she does. But he hopes someone would think to call him if she was…

He can’t finish the thought without that knot in the pit of his stomach tightening again until he feels like he might choke on it.

 

* * *

The phone in the back pocket of his pants starts to vibrate when he’s resting by the side of the road outside of Zagreb.

 

* * *

He meets Clint that afternoon at Pleso Airport. Somehow, it doesn’t surprise him at all that Clint has managed to acquire a helicopter, even though he couldn’t possibly have flown it all the way across the Atlantic.

(Wanda makes an aborted move like she might be going to shake his hand, or hug him. When she doesn’t finish the motion, Bruce gives her a sad smile. He understands.)

They’re quiet on the flight to Germany. He expects to ask all the polite questions - about Clint’s family, about Wanda’s opinion of life in the Avengers’ compound, about how life since Sokovia has treated both of them. They're all sitting on the tip of his tongue, the oppressive weight of their too-formal syllables pressing it to the bottom of his mouth. But there are no comms in the headsets Clint gives them, so he passes the flight shaping mudras with both of his hands.

_Prithvi mudra. Touch the tip of the ring finger to the thumb. I am stable, I am confident._

_Shuni mudra. Touch the middle finger to the thumb. I am patient._

_Gyan mudra. Touch the pointer finger to the thumb and relax the other fingers. I am calm._

_Ahamkara mudra. Touch the side of the pointer finger with the thumb. I am not afraid._

Wanda sits absolutely still in the seat next to him. If she notices the gestures he’s making, she doesn’t give any sign.

 

* * *

The van is silent too, but only because he volunteered to ride in the back, leaving Clint and Wanda the seats in the front. He can hear their muffled voices through the metal paneling, but makes no effort to figure out what they’re saying.

It surprises him a little when he realizes that he isn’t worried that they might be talking about him. It surprises him more when he thinks to himself that Clint, at least, trusts him enough not to.

When the van rolls to a shuddering stop, and the door slides open to reveal Captain America himself, Bruce doesn’t bother fighting the smile that rises to his lips. He’s circled the globe more than once since the Incident, but here, in the back of a nondescript panel van in a parking garage outside a German airport, he remembers that home has never been in the places he stayed, but in the people he was with. He hasn’t been home in a very long time.

He doesn’t tell Steve that he’s glad he called.

**Author's Note:**

> The working title for this was "the addition of bruce banner improves all stories" and honestly that's really all you need to know about my thought process here.


End file.
